


Fly your feelings away

by TerresDeBrume



Series: AUs without a cause [9]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies RPF
Genre: Angst, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're all ready for the hike, except for the fact that Tom isn't there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fly your feelings away

**Author's Note:**

> So this is actually pretty old, but I realized I'd posted it on Tumblr and not here, so there it is.

“Has anybody seen Tom?”

 

It’s Robert who asks, and suddenly they’re all looking around for the British man, various degrees of worry painted on their faces. Usually, having Tom disappear on them wouldn’t be worrying: he does that all the time on set, takes off god knows where, and about fifteen minutes later Chris has a phone full of photos of Mjölnir in random locations –including, once, in the hands of a squirrel- or they get one of those ridiculous puns and/or smiles forwarded to everyone, like a kid so proud of his joke he has to call mommy and tell her to look.

(Honestly, between the amount of photos Chris gets, the way Tom talks about his looks more than any other, and the way he looks at him… they’re probably going to have to talk.)

 

It’s been a rough couple of months for Tom.

Hell, it’s been a rough couple of  _years_  for Tom.

First, he was attacked by a group of homophobes as he was coming out of a gay club, not too long after the end of their Avengers promotion tour. Incidentally, Chris and the other cast members only found out about it at the same time as everyone else, which was when the CCTV recording leaked and ended up on Tumblr –which was the end of any hope Tom had to make his bruise pass for a skiing accident, or stay in the closet.   
What surprised Chris the most is, he never seemed to hide anything. Not that he should or shouldn’t have –being gay in the acting business, well. It’s better now, but it’s still not always as easy as being straight, and at any rate, it should have been Tom’s decision to tell others about his sexuality or not. It’s just, Chris always thought –somewhat stupidly, it’s true- that when people didn’t tell you about their sexuality, you kind of felt it, like a secret. In truth, the only change Chris saw in Tom’s behavior after that was that he was a bit wary for the first week, testing reactions, and when he saw his friends didn’t reject him or anything, he started going back to normal –or as close to it as he could with his forearm in a plaster and cracked ribs.

Not very long after that, his London flat was ransacked and torn down, which forced him to move, and  _then_ , when things finally seemed to get brighter, there was the hold up.

 

It wasn’t  _really_  a hold up, more like a pseudo-symbolic gesture for whatever extremist group it was that attacked –ironically enough, there was something about Angels in their name, if Chris remembers correctly.

Only  _they_  weren’t angels. They took a dozen hostages, including a nine years old girl, and kept them all at gunpoint for about ten hour, killing one every hour. For what? Chris has no idea. He’s not sure anybody does. All he knows is, all of the people who were taken that day were winged. All of them, except Tom, or so the world had thought until one of the guards moved to his side while the camera kept transmitting live images onto the neighborhood screens.  
Chris will never forget the sight of Tom using his hand to throw a gun away while a wing as bright as his hair broke the nose of the man who’d been holding him by the neck. The next few seconds are forever seared into his brain as well, Tom turning around, grabbing the girl in his arms, and jumping from the roof of a fifty floor building with gunshots floating in the air.

He remembers crossing the road from the restaurant Tom was supposed to meet the rest of the Avengers cast, and seeing Tom stand here with a bloodied face and his left wing hanging limply at his side while the little girl cried, head filled with the memory of her mother shot in the head. Oh, how relieved he felt at that moment, he could have wept.  
The media though… well. Some of them are pretty nice, but a good chunk are like sharks, and when they smelled blood in the water, they swarmed to Tom like he was the last piece of news they’ have this decade –he was, after all, the first actor ever to openly show off his wings.

Things got better when Natalie came out in support, and the photographs of them on the red carpet with their wings extended –flaming copper and soft chestnut- are beautiful and framed on their respective mantelpieces, but it’s still recent, and a lot to process.

 

Which is why when Robert point out that they haven’t seen Tom in a while, they kind of worry.

They’re all in vacations together –by coincidence as much as by design- on a small island in the French Caribbean, and today was to be their lazy day –until Tom sneaked out on them and now they’re looking around with mounting panic.

 

 

In the end, it’s Chris who finds him first, alone on a nearby hill with music blasting from a small radio device. He’s wearing the tackiest pants Chris has ever seen on him -a shade of green that should be prohibited- and he’s dancing like the world doesn’t exist, shaking his limbs and ruffled wings along with the beat –something in… Chinese. Well, okay, if he want to roll with that.

It’s the exterior garden of their shared residence, actually, and Tom is currently bouncing on one of the sofas, long brown feathers shooting in the air to maintain his balance while tears and sweat mix on his face, fists punching at nothing and mouth opened on frustrated screams that don’t want to come out, except maybe in the tense lines of Tom’s back, the hard clench of his jaw, and for a long while he stands there, watching Tom try to exhaust his frustration away but only succeeding in catching a sunburn and maybe a headache, too.

 

Chris watches for a while longer before he goes to the radio and cuts the music.

Tom’s wings puff up when he sees him, feathers sticking every which ways as he wipes his tears on his forearm, curls of old bronze clinging to his forehead. He looks beautiful like this, Chris sees it. He never tried to deny it, never decided not to be stirred by it. He’s just not into men, and as much as he loves Tom, it’s just not that kind of love.

He wonders how he can say it without sounding condescending or downright mean, but Tom saves him the trouble.

 

“I know,” he says, wings pressed against his back in an obvious show of restraint. “I know, and I don’t resent or blame you. It’s not like you’re doing it on purpose.”

“I’m sorry,” Chris says, because he means it, and Tom smiles.

“It’ll pass.” Tom shrugs, an elegant movement of shoulder that makes his wing shake, and Chris asks:

“Could you take someone flying?”

 

It comes out hasty, blunt, maybe even demanding –Chris is dying with curiosity as to what it feels like to fly over land and forget your worries on the ground, but he doesn’t want to impose, and he thinks he knows the answer even before Tom shakes his head.

 

“I can’t. You’re too heavy. And even if you weren’t, right now, you’re the last person I want to take flying right now.”

“I… well. I’m really sorry,” Chris says again, and Tom’s smile becomes a sad shadow of itself.

“It’s not your fault,” he says. “It’s just that up there… it’s the only place where I’m sure nothing can remind me of you. For now, I need that, if I want a chance at getting over you.”

“I understand,” Chris says, even if he doesn’t really. “Do you mind if I… If I watch you, for a while?”

 

Tom doesn’t answer, but he climbs back on the sofa, in perfect balance on the back of it, and then jumps forward, wings furiously pumping at the air and shaking Chris’ hair from his forehead. Chris watches him rise in the blue of the sky, copper and green and so obviously  _fit_ to the station that it’s practically painful to watch.

He watches Tom fly away from him and he’s reminded of this old saying about loving people and letting them go, and he wonders if it’s so terribly selfish to hope that his best friend will come back to him one day.

He wonders if it’s ever going to be easy and light again between them, or if any hope of that has flown away with Tom and his ridiculous green pants.

 

Most of all –and he knows that’s the shittiest thing he could wonder right now because he’s straight, damnit, and they’ve only just put their cards on the table- he wonders what it would be like to love Tom like Tom loves him, and how it would feel if he didn’t have the possibility to try and fly his feelings away.


End file.
